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Italian sizing is the numbering system used by most Italian fashion houses, including Loro Piana (Women's / Men's). It's built around a different body-measurement baseline than US or UK sizing, so an Italian 48 isn't simply a relabeled US 38 — it's cut from separate blocks entirely, and the gap widens further once fabric weight and tailoring style are factored in.
Not exactly. The sizing itself converts fairly predictably once you know the Italian-to-US offset, which typically runs about ten sizes higher in numbering. The part that catches people off guard is the cut: Loro Piana's knitwear and outerwear are constructed with minimal ease and almost no give in the fabric, so a garment in your converted size can still fit closer through the chest and shoulders than a same-labeled size from a brand with a looser block. Buyers coming from relaxed American tailoring often read that closeness as 'running small,' when it's really a difference in design intent.
These are directional starting points, not fixed conversions — always check the brand's own measurement chart or the seller's flat measurements before buying secondhand, since cut varies by garment and by era.
* Knitwear: Italian 46 sits close to a US 36-38 / UK 14-16; Italian 48 close to a US 38-40 / UK 16-18 * Shirts: Italian 39 collar sits close to a US 15-15.5 / UK 15-15.5; Italian 40 close to a US 15.5-16 / UK 15.5-16 * Outerwear: Italian 48 sits close to a US 38-40 / UK 16-18; Italian 50 close to a US 40-42 / UK 18-20
Outerwear and tailoring tend to convert closer to true size than knitwear does, since a coat is built with structure while a sweater is built to skim.
Loro Piana's knitwear is typically spun from two-ply cashmere in a fine gauge, meaning more stitches per inch than the bulkier gauges common in mass-market sweaters. A finer gauge produces less structural stretch, so the garment relies on the pattern's cut, not the yarn's elasticity, to move with the body. That's also why it drapes close rather than clinging or bagging: there's little fabric doing the compensating if the size is off. On secondhand platforms, this is the detail that separates a garment that looks slightly snug in photos from one that's genuinely a size down.